


On the Shores of the Waking Sea

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Early in Canon, F/M, Gen, Storm Coast (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 00:36:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18728113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Hazrine Adaar struggles to adjust to her new life as the Herald of Andraste, but her new companions slowly help to ease the transition.





	On the Shores of the Waking Sea

Hazrine stared into the darkness, willing her eyes to adjust more rapidly.  The afterimage of their campfire, now blown out despite three flame glyphs, still blazed fiercely against the backs of her eyes.  She raised her lip in a snarl of irritation.  She needed to see, damn it, and she needed to see now. **  
**

Storms with rain and lightning had never been her forte.  The Free Marches didn’t deal with them often, its weather far more likely to include heat waves and mild droughts.  Most of the time things were actually rather pleasant, especially when you got round Starkhaven or Ostwick:  warm green summers, mild winters.

Kirkwall had been the outlier, living up to its reputation.  It was always a bit of a hole.  It boiled in the summer, and was perpetually damp and steamy and cold in the winters. She and her crew had tried to avoid it as much as possible, but inevitably a job would call and they’d find themselves back again, grumbling all the while.

But Kirkwall had been a  _calm_  hole.  Not like this thrashing, seething storm boiling up out of nowhere outside the little cave they had found, a storm that seemed liable to send them all flying off into the night.  Could the wind do that?  She figured herself, Blackwall, and the Iron Bull would probably be all right, but she had genuine concerns that Solas would get thrown up into the air like a bundle of rags and slammed up against the mountainside.  

“Herald!” Blackwall shouted, his voice swallowed up by the roaring wind.  “Have you gone mad?  You’ll be struck by lightning!”

“Are we safe here?” Hazrine bellowed.  Her throat ached with the effort of shouting above the storm, and her skin was stung by the slap of cold and bitter rain.  Wait.  Was that rain?  Or was that fucking  _hail_?  She took Blackwall’s advice and leapt back beneath the roof of the cave, shaking.  

“Not as if we’ve got any other choice!” Bull roared.  He looked just as rain-pelted as she was, despite having stayed in the cave the entire time.  Hazrine squinted at him and the others.  She badly missed the brightness of the fire.  She felt mana stirring in her right hand, ready and waiting for her to attempt to call flames again.

A flash of coruscating green and blue, different from the mark that pulsed intermittently in the flat of her hand.  Solas stood illuminated, a barrier shimmering around him and spreading over the mouth of the cave.  “That should protect us for a time,” he said.  The barrier kept some of the storm’s terrible noise out as well as its rain and wind, a fact Hazrine was grateful for.

“How long will it last?” she asked shrewdly.  She’d never been terribly good at barriers herself.

Solas considered the question.  “I cannot hold it indefinitely.  Luckily, no storm has ever lasted forever.  We should be safe.”

“I hope so,” said Hazrine fervently.

A deafening thunderclap reverberated overhead, sending Hazrine jumping.  She crashed into Blackwall, who staggered from the sudden blow.  A searing jolt of lightning lit the cave, and Hazrine realized, abashed, that Blackwall looked dazed.

“I’m dreadfully sorry,” she said in a babble.  “It’s just – the storm noise – I’m not used to them – I was startled –”

Blackwall raised a gloved hand in her direction, shaking his head.  He looked a little more alert now.  “Not to worry, my lady.  This is some storm.  I’m a little rattled, too, if I’m to be honest.”

“You’re simply saying that to be kind,” said Hazrine, giving an uncertain laugh.  She did appreciate it, whether or not he was telling the truth.

“Warden’s honor,” said Blackwall stoutly, standing straight and holding his hand over his breastplate.  

She chuckled.  The rain and wind outside still shouted, but the roar was dulled behind the barrier.  It was good, not having to shout.  “All right, I believe you.  It’s quite noble of you to try and make me feel better, you realize.”

“Quite noble indeed,” said Solas mildly.  He closed his eyes for a moment, and the barrier flared again, renewing even as it began to fade.

“Thanks for the storm guard,” said Bull.  “At least we won’t flood.”

“It is the least I could do,” said Solas.  He gazed out into the darkness, which was marked only by intermittent flashes of lightning, some well-defined in bolts and streaks, others only in faint flashes far in the distance.  “It is good we were not attempting to make further ground tonight.  Lightning from a mage can be deflected if one is given sufficient warning.  Lightning from a storm is another thing altogether.”

Hazrine shuddered.  “I’d rather not encounter it at all.  This place does live up to its name, doesn’t it?”

 

***

 

They spent another hour in the cramped cave, which became steadily more and more humid as the water began to evaporate from their soaking clothing.  Hazrine was almost contemplating telling Solas to lower the barrier and she’d take her chances outside in the storm – none of them smelled particularly nice at this point – when she realized that the rain drumming against the stone roof had slackened, and she hadn’t heard thunder in some time.  The others seemed to make the same realization together, and Solas’s barrier dissipated in a gentle swirl of green sparks.

“Thank you,” she said to him.  “When things are a little calmer, and a great deal less damp, would you mind showing me some of your tricks to sustain a barrier over an inanimate surface?  I only seem to have luck getting them to hold over a living person.  It feels as if the barrier doesn’t want to stick, otherwise.”

“It usually doesn’t,” said Solas, looking rather gratified.  “It does take a certain amount of adjusting the way it is cast, as well as a change in mental focus.  I would be happy to discuss the theory with you beneath the light of day.”

She nodded, yawning.  “Bull?  Are you still all right with the late watch?  You were supposed to be sleeping during all of this…”

Bull shrugged.  “I’ve been through worse.  Go on, get some shut-eye.  I’ll keep the watch.”

Hazrine gratefully laid down on a bundle that was the sodden, limp remains of her bedroll.  She was so tired she didn’t even care how damp it was.  She drifted off into a deep and heavy sleep, the Fade only the faintest presence in the back of her mind.

 

***

 

She woke suddenly, sweet birdsong a gentle rejoinder in her ears.  She rolled over onto her back, realizing she was still uncomfortably damp, and now heavily chilled.  

“Time to get moving,” she muttered under her breath.  Nothing better than getting out for a bit of a walk when one was stiff with camp-sleep, and once she was out of the narrow confines of the cave she could set out a bit of fire magic to help dry her clothing.  She glanced around and saw Bull nodding, his back against the stony wall of the cave, and Solas sleeping near where their fire had been.  The elf could sleep anywhere.  It was truly a fascinating thing to behold. She had envied him for it more than once.

Blackwall wasn’t in the cave, and she remembered he had claimed the early morning watch.  She suspected she would find him just outside the mouth of the cave, as so far in their time together, she had never known him to break his word or shirk his duty.  The thought settled on her.  It was a comfortable reality.

She got to her feet, careful to move as quietly as possible so as not to disturb Solas and the Iron Bull.  She bowed her head as she got up so that she would not smack it against the roof of the cave, and shuffled outside into a copse of pines dewy with last night’s rain.  They smelled intoxicatingly green. The sun edged over the sea’s horizon, spilling gold out across the water and lining the edges of the trees.  Shit, if it wasn’t beautiful.  And after the terror that had been last night’s storm.  The world was a funny place, sometimes.

“Morning,” called Blackwall gruffly.  She glanced over and saw him sitting on a fallen log several feet away, holding a knife and something small in his hands.  His black hair and beard were terribly rumpled, sticking up and out in several interesting patterns.

“Anything?” she asked, drawing closer to him.  

“Nothing nearby.  Thought I might have heard a bear further out, but it hasn’t wandered this way,” said Blackwall.  “I don’t mind if it keeps its distance.”

She laughed, a bright, piercing sound, and she peered curiously at his hands.  “I’d agree with that.  Now, what have you got there?”

“A bit of whittling,” he said.  “It’s something to do.  You look for ways to keep yourself occupied, when you’re on your own.”  He held up the object in his hand, and she realized it was a little chunk of wood, still damp from the night before.  She stared closely at it, realizing that it looked unmistakably like a Ferelden hound.  A rough, blocky face stared back at her from knife-drilled eyes.

“I’ve never given it a try,” said Hazrine, contemplating the steady, careful action of his hand working the knife.  Tiny shavings of wood slipped over the edge of the knife, falling down between his feet.  “How do you know which bits to cut out, and which bits to leave?”

“You make a lot of mistakes,” said Blackwall, chuckling.  “You don’t want to know what the first thing I whittled looked like.  A face only a mother could love.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t too bad.”

“It looked like somebody had punched a demon in the face and dropped it into a fire.”

“How on earth did you carve it so badly as to look like it was dropped in a fire?” she asked.

He gave her a sly smirk.  “By dropping it into the fire,” he said.  “While I was working on it.  Still tried to keep going with it once I’d blown out the flames.  Learned a fair bit about what not to do, anyway.”

“Sometimes that’s the most important part though, isn’t it?” asked Hazrine. “Learning what not to do can be invaluable.  Like learning not to set out on patrol on the Storm Coast when it’s cloudy.”  She sat down on the log beside him, casting her gaze around to make sure there were no bears or mercenaries in their line of sight.  

He wore a strange look on his face, his mouth twisting up to one side, his eyes guarded.  Then the look was gone, and he was back to whittling, his blade snicking against the wood.  He pursed his lips together in concentration.

“Do you think we’ll find out anything about the Wardens here?” she asked.  “Surely it must be weighing on you that we don’t know what’s become of them.”

Blackwall nodded, his brows knitting together in concern.  “I don’t like it.  It doesn’t make any sense, and it isn’t like the Wardens to vanish when there are clear problems out there that could be solved by good people with swords or arrows.  Something’s wrong, that much is certain.  No darkspawn’s no excuse for a Warden to not be found.”  He sighed.  “Nothing’s gone right in some time, has it?”  The way he spoke it, it was less a question than a declaration.

Hazrine thought of the Valo-kas across the Waking Sea, going on without her.  She thought of her new people here, the uncertainties between them, the uneasiness of almost-strangers.  Maybe it was getting better.  Iron Bull’s jokes, Blackwall’s whittling, Solas’ teaching.  But it was still too soon to tell.

She looked down at her hand.  Green light crackled and spit from her palm, shifting as she tilted her hand back and forth.  She closed her fingers over the buzzing split, forming a fist that glowed.

“I know what you mean,” she said quietly, and the sounds of birdsong and the waves below filled the clearing, drowning out the silence.


End file.
